CATALONIA DECLARES INDEPENDENCE — MADRID IMPOSES DIRECT RULE

Seventy of the Catalan parliament’s 135 members voted in favor of independence at 3:30 p.m. local time Friday. Within minutes Wikipedia had been updated to list Catalonia as a “disputed territory.” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said “the rule of law will restore legality in Catalonia,” the Catalan Parliament was dissolved by Madrid, and new elections will be held December 21. The moves are a major escalation in a years-long conflict between Catalonia’s pro-independence leaders and the Spanish government that came to a head with a disputed referendum on October 1. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU “doesn’t need any more fissures.”

‘BABY HITLER’ SCANDAL ESCALATES IN AUSTRIA

German satirical magazine Titanic on Friday depicted Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz next to a picture of a crashed car, with the caption “Austria on a crash-Kurz: Baby Hitler gets his driver’s license!” The wrecked car is believed to be that in which former Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Jörg Haider died nine years ago, Austrian media outlet Krone reported. It follows the news that Kurz’s center-right People’s Party (ÖVP) has started coalition talks with the right-wing FPÖ and its leader Heinz-Christian Strache, the successor of Haider. Earlier this month, Titanic came under fire for tweeting a picture of Kurz with crosshairs trained on his chest, with the caption: “Finally possible: Kill baby Hitler!”

BELGIUM’S NEW ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COURT

The Belgian government is creating an English-speaking commercial arbitration court, Prime Minister Charles Michel said, in a move aimed at luring and reassuring companies that want English-language EU bases. Belgium already runs a bureaucracy in three official national languages, now the “Brussels International Business Court” will add a fourth language into the official mix. Of course, in keeping with many public services’ notional English support, the press statement announcing the court was available only in Dutch and French.

BRIDGE IS NOT A SPORT, SAYS COURT

The European Court of Justice ruled that duplicate bridge, a form of the card game bridge played competitively at the national and international levels, cannot be considered a sport and is therefore not exempt from VAT. While EU judges acknowledged that bridge “may constitute an activity beneficial to the mental and physical health of regular participants,” they ultimately concluded that this is not sufficient for it to be classified as a sport. Watch the Commission’s reaction to this landmark ruling.

A message from the EPP Group: This year’s Sakharov Prize goes to the Democratic Opposition in Venezuela. The award will contribute to restoring freedom, democracy, peace, human rights and the rule of law in Venezuela — the values that the Sakharov Prize is meant to represent. We look forward to receiving them in the European Parliament in December.

WHO’S UP?

Andrej Babiš: The Czech billionaire is poised to become prime minister.

Emmanuel Macron: Most of the French president’s proposals to revamp the EU’s Posted Workers Directive were watered down, but he got good coverage of his “first European victory.”

AND WHO’S DOWN?

Antonio Tajani: Said no formal complaints about sexual harassment had been received by the Parliament’s harassment committee, but four women have said they complained through other official Parliament channels.

Jared O’Mara: The U.K. Labour MP was suspended after offensive comments he made in the past were unearthed.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS IN THE EU

That’s the subject of a special discussion in this week’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast.

Playbook learned a lot about alleged harassment and sexual violence in the Brussels bubble from people who got in touch about the subject over the past week. Who tends to be a victim (women, often young and without a long-term employment contract), who they say is the aggressor (an equal split between colleagues and bosses), where they work (more often for companies and NGOs than for the EU). The alleged victims are nearly always women (91 percent of those who got in touch with us) and more than half didn’t feel able to report what had happened to them.

The European Parliament did not account for the highest number of allegations, but does have a number of unique problems to overcome. Party loyalties can cloud otherwise rational judgment; people do things in Brussels and Strasbourg they might not do at home; assistants can be fired on the spot for “loss of trust;” nearly everyone works in an enclosed rabbit warren of offices.

The stories Playbook heard — more than 150 so far — were often, in a sense, ordinary: They didn’t involve a well-known person and the scars were mental, not physical. The people who told them often wondered if anyone would care, or whether the story was even worth mentioning.

The majority of the stories were told anonymously and cannot be independently verified, but they help paint a picture of a dark corner of the Brussels bubble: the client who groped a consultant; the senior Commission staffer who froze out an intern who refused sex; the Cabinet member who drove a young official to a pre-booked hotel room instead of lunch; the woman told not to go to the police; the senior MEPs who touch people in the Parliament lifts; the men harassed on gay app Grindr by closeted EU figures. Playbook will keep listening.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“[Brexit] was the single stupidest thing any country has ever done, but then we Trumped it.”

— Media mogul and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

FEUD OF THE WEEK

Wolfgang Schäuble vs. the AfD: Schäuble, the German parliament’s new speaker, this week told the far-right Alternative for Germany that they can engage in tough debates — as long as they fight fairly. “Democratic controversy is necessary, but this controversy follows rules and this includes the willingness to respect democratic procedures,” the former finance minister told Germany’s lower house of parliament Tuesday afternoon. His message to the assembly was: I’ve seen a lot through the years and I’m not scared by what lies ahead.

DON’T MESS WITH RODRIGUES

Earlier this week, employment ministers signed off on one of Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s pet projects, the so-called European Pillar of Social Rights, which sets out the 20 rights that Europeans are entitled to. For a while, it looked like the whole thing might go down in flames because of the inclusion of a single word — “would” — in the text. One of the Parliament’s most formidable Socialist MEPs, Maria João Rodrigues, believed that extra word would water down the text, and she stubbornly fought governments, including Ireland, Poland and Hungary, nervous about EU mission creep. The offending sentence read: “For them to be legally enforceable, the principles and rights would require dedicated measures or legislation to be adopted at the appropriate level.” Rodrigues believed the use of the conditional tense would render the whole proclamation meaningless, and demanded the word “would” be removed. She won.

With the clock ticking, national governments, fellow MEPs and the Commission started phoning Rodrigues, demanding she back down. “I started receiving calls from everywhere, saying ‘Maria, please accept it, it’s just a word,’” she told Playbook. “I’m sorry, this is not just a word, this is a general attitude. We need to make it clear this proclamation is for real. I will not move.” And she didn’t. Discussions about the word “would” came down to the wire at the European Council summit. “Some of the calls were saying, ‘Maria, we are running the risk of losing everything.’” But by the time ambassadors met Friday afternoon, a “really elegant” solution had been found, she said, which involved re-ordering the words and keeping “would” out of the text. “I wanted a proclamation without a conditional word, absolutely, so I decided to run the risk. I was prepared to take the blame [for the plan collapsing]. Sometimes in politics it’s just like that,” she said.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Star of TV show “Mindhunter” Jonathan Groff and French President Emmanuel Macron.

BY THE NUMBERS

66: Number of pending proposals and ongoing legislative negotiations the Commission would like agreement on before December 2018.

10,000: Number of sheep killed by wolves in France in 2016.

0: Number of formal votes taken by national experts on the renewal of glyphosate, pushing a decision on the controversial weedkiller into November.

GAFFES & LAUGHS

‘Grotesque’ price rises in canteen: In the same week dozens of sexual harassment allegations surfaced in and around Parliament, the thing worrying a group of staff trade unions was … canteen price rises. In an email sent to the whole Parliament, the unions said “the Parliament itself has asked for these increases!!!” Urging colleagues not to boycott canteens, the union asked the staff committee to “intervene without delay … by demanding an independent AUDIT on this matter.” That’s their capital letters, not ours.

MEP accused of misusing EU funds asks for help: For much of the past year, Morten Messerschmidt, a Danish People’s Party MEP, was dogged by allegations of misspending EU funds through a now-defunct pan-European political party that he set up. So serious were the allegations that the EU’s anti-fraud team got involved. He’s now back in the Parliament after a few months off due to stress and is working as the European Conservatives and Reformists’ point man on measures to tighten up the rules on what political parties can get up to — rules proposed by the Commission in response to Messerschmidt’s alleged wrongdoing. He’s clearly a little confused by the rules, since he’s emailed colleagues asking for their support to set up a working group on transparency because “certain European parties and foundations have during recent years been asked to pay back sums, because some of their activities have retroactively been deemed ineligible.” Needless to say, his suggestion has gone down like a ton of bricks.

A message from the EPP Group: In our round-up of the European Parliament’s latest plenary session: The European Parliament considers the scenario of a collapse in Brexit talks and cuts Turkey’s EU pre-accession funds. MEPs approve funding for free Interrail tickets for young Europeans, a pilot project championed by our Chairman Manfred Weber, expected to provide 20,000 tickets in 2018. An electronic entry/exit system to replace manual passport checks gets the green light, helping reinforce Europe’s external borders and putting an end to false identities like that of the terrorist from the Berlin Christmas market. And the Parliament adopts its position on improved EU rules for posted workers. Watch now.